What this document is
A single-page action instrument: the one thing to authorise, and the date that makes it urgent.
- Alachua hauls 260,758 tons a year to Raiford under an agreement that expires 31 December 2028, at which point the rate rises 56.7% to $47 a ton and keeps rising.
- Carbotura pays the County a Circular Royalty™ beginning at $120 a ton and escalating one percentage point a year, uncapped, for a 30-year minimum term.
- One action: authorise an LOI/MOU and open a Joint Working Group, so the commercial terms are scoped while the disposal decision is still open.
260,758 tons a year, and the route it takes has an end date
Alachua County collects its residual stream at one place — the Leveda Brown Environmental Park & Transfer Station on NE 63rd Avenue — and hauls it to the New River Regional Landfill in Raiford, out of county. In 2024 that was 260,758 tons. The agreement runs to 31 December 2028. From 2029 the gate rate moves from $30 to $47 a ton, a 56.7% step, with further increases across the following five years. Alachua supplies roughly 69% of New River’s volume.
Carbotura was built for exactly this stream. Advanced Circular Manufacturing (ACM) takes delivered municipal residual and converts it into specification-grade manufactured products — graphite, graphene compounds, recovered metals, industrial gases and ultra-pure water. It is a manufacturing operation, not a disposal operation, and it does not burn anything.
The commercial structure is deliberately plain. Under a Circular Supply Agreement the County pays a Beneficiation Fee, modelled here at $100 a ton — the floor of the $100–150/ton range. That is stated without decoration: it is above what Alachua pays at the New River gate today, and above the $47 the County is contracted to pay from 2029. Carbotura does not claim to be the cheaper per-ton disposal line, because it is not one.
What the County receives is separate and larger. Beginning 13 months after Carbotura’s receipt of the first Beneficiation Fee payment, Carbotura pays Alachua County a Circular Royalty™ on delivered tonnage, starting at 120% of that year’s Beneficiation Fee and rising one percentage point every year, uncapped, for a 30-year minimum term. The fee and the royalty are two independent transactions, reported separately and in full. They are never netted against each other, and nothing in this package presents them as a single figure.
Why Alachua, and why now
The Board has authorised staff to issue an RFP for transportation and disposal services. A decision of this size is made once every fifteen or twenty years, and Alachua is making it now.
$30 a ton becomes $47 in 2029 — 56.7% — with further increases across the five years after that. Every alternative on the table keeps the County paying to move material to somewhere else.
The County has dedicated 31 acres to an Eco Industrial Park immediately beside the transfer station, with 80 more acres available, and has an open Request for Information seeking parties to design, build, finance, own and operate facilities there. The entire county residual already arrives next door.
Balu Forest — land the County bought to build a new disposal facility — needs at least five years of permitting, processing and construction, funded by the County. Carbotura funds its own facility. The County commits no capital at any phase.
At roughly 69% of New River’s volume, Alachua is the largest single contributor to the facility it is negotiating with. That is leverage, and it expires with the contract.
The structure, stated once
The Beneficiation Fee and the Circular Royalty™ are independent gross transactions with different payers. They are reported separately and never netted against one another.
The same physical mass is counted once in each of three dimensions — asset, revenue, attributes — and never summed as three independent masses.
Build-Own-Operate. Carbotura funds 100% of capital at every phase. The counterparty commits feedstock, not money.
One Circular Supply Agreement
+ Circular Royalty™
- Beneficiation Fee: $100–150/ton · set at Term Sheet against the verified FWDC · 2.5%/yr escalator
- Circular Royalty™: 120% of the current-year Beneficiation Fee in Year 1 ($120–180/ton), +1pp/yr, uncapped
- Royalty commencement: 13 months after the first Beneficiation Fee payment, rolling monthly on delivered tonnage
- Perpetual CSA, 30-year minimum term · Build-Own-Operate · zero counterparty capital
- Feedstock transfers under the CSA — ownership and liability pass at collection or delivery
- Accounting basis: US GAAP / GASB
The County’s Southwest Landfill at Archer closed roughly thirty years ago, retains usable capacity, and contains unlined cells. The Board has itself raised recovering material from those cells and lining them to improve groundwater quality. That is the profile Carbotura’s Exogenesis™ add-on exists for: legacy mass processed through the same facility under a Legacy Remediation Royalty paid in addition to the Circular Royalty™.
No tonnage is claimed here. No characterisation of the Archer mass has been published and none has been measured. Exogenesis™ candidacy is conditional on a Waste Characterization Study, which is a standard Term Sheet phase item. It is named in this brief because the County has already identified the asset, not because it has been quantified.
Key figures at a glance
Circular Royalty™ projections by phase
Beneficiation Fee and Circular Royalty™ shown independently per the Separate Transaction Principle. No figure on this page nets one against the other.
| Capacity | Annual TPY | Beneficiation Fee · Year 1 | Circular Royalty™ · Year 1 basis | 30-Year Gross Royalty | Direct FTE |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 400 TPD ← entry point Phase Phase Initial | 146,000 | $14.60M | $17.52M | ~$874M ESTIMATED | ~100 |
| 600 TPD Phase Phase Medium | 219,000 | $21.90M | $26.28M | ~$1,311M ESTIMATED | ~150 |
| 800 TPD Phase Phase Expanded | 292,000 | $29.20M | $35.04M | ~$1,748M ESTIMATED | ~200 |
Beneficiation Fee modelled at $100/ton, the floor of the $100–150/ton range; Circular Royalty™ at 120% of the current-year fee in Year 1, +1 percentage point per year uncapped. Fee and royalty are independent gross transactions and are never netted. Tonnage VERIFIED from the County’s 2024 FDEP report. Figures ILLUSTRATIVE until Term Sheet execution.